Emma

Description

Oft-copied but never bettered, Jane Austen's Emma is a remarkable comedy of manners that follows the charming but insensitive Emma Woodhouse as she sets out on an ill-fated career of match-making in the little town of Highbury. Taking the pretty but dreary Harriet Smith as her subject, Emma creates misunderstandings and chaos as she tries to find Harriet a suitor, until she begins to realize it isn't the lives of others she must try to transform. Gorgeously illustrated by the celebrated Hugh Thomson, this Macmillan Collector's Library edition also includes an afterword by David Pinching. Designed to appeal to the booklover, the Macmillan Collector's Library is a series of beautiful gift editions of much loved classic titles. Macmillan Collector's Library are books to love and treasure.

Jane Austen was born in 1775 in rural Hampshire, the daughter of an affluent village rector who encouraged her in her artistic pursuits. In novels such as Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park and Emma she developed her subtle analysis of contemporary life through depictions of the middle-classes in small towns. Her sharp wit and incisive portraits of ordinary people have given her novels enduring popularity. She died in 1817.

It's provincial, opaque, sparkling and wonderfully optimistic while being at the same time tinged with intimations of sorrow and mortality. -- Robert McCrum, 'The 100 best novels' * The Guardian * Emma's brilliance-its enduring status as a masterpiece of fiction-is that it puts us in the position of the less-clever-than-she-thinks-she-is heroine -- Devoney Looser * Literary Hub * Emma seems to know more about our hearts that we ever do, no matter how old or experienced we may think we are. -- Luke McGrath * HuffPost *